Singularity 101

[andrewducker]

Over here Vernor Vinge talks about The Singularity. His personal definition is:
Humans, using technology, will be able to create, or become, creatures of superhuman intelligence.
[Poll #1390606]

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

It largely seems to be used to handwave a "Human Intelligence is Spoooooky - maybe it's beyond man's ability to meddle with!", which I assume isn't the kind of viewpoint you'd take.

Indeed not.

(In fact, that was my throw-book-at-wall moment with Roger Penrose -- when he glibly announced, in effect, that there was no reason to define consciousness in order to prove that a machine couldn't do it.)

My point is, we're talking about emulating or exceeding the performance of a trait we don't understand, which may be a whole lot different from what we think it is -- an emergent consequence of a bunch of different things.

[andrewducker]

Was it Penrose that basically said "Brains are strange, Quantum Physics is strange, therefore Brains are Quantum"?

I totally take your point that we don't understand what makes intelligence work - not that I count intelligence as all that people do, by any means - our intelligence is only a fraction of what our brains are up to.